AMID the silence which followed Elbert’s remark, June fought hard to
cast her weakness off. She wanted no longer to die. The recovery of the
talisman inhibited, at least for the time being, that desire. Acutely
aware that the Van Roon was still miraculously hers, she felt that come
what might she must go on.
But her position was hopeless indeed. She dare not venture out of
doors, with a murderous thief waiting to spring upon her. And if
venture she did, there was nowhere she could go. Besides, had there
been any place of refuge for such a weary bundle of frightened misery,
without money and with a sorry ignorance of the fog-bound maze of
bricks and mortar in which she was now lost, there would have been no
means of getting to her destination.
At the same time, she had no wish to stay with these uncouth,
ill-looking, evil-smelling people one moment longer than was necessary.
In a curiously intimate way she was reminded of that grim story Oliver
Twist, which had so powerfully haunted her youth. To her distorted
mind, this squalid interior was a veritable thieves’ kitchen, the crone
a female Fagin, the angel of the cup, a counterpart of Bill Sikes, and
the gloomy, beetle-browed Elbert a kind of Artful Dodger grown up. She
and her treasure could never be safe in such a place, yet at the other
side of the door nameless horrors awaited her.
In June’s present state it was far beyond her power to cope with so
dire a problem. Keeping a stony silence as those faces, devoured by
curiosity, pressed ever closer upon her, she half surrendered to her
weakness again.
Amid the new waves of misery which threatened to submerge her, she
was wrenched fiercely back to sensibility. The Van Roon was torn by
a strong hand from her grasp. As if a spring had been pressed in her
heart she rose with a little cry. Maw was in the act of handing the
picture to Elbert. “There’s a label on it, ain’t there?” she said.
Still half stupefied, June clung to the table for support, while
Elbert, who was evidently the family scholar, read out slowly the name
and address that was written upon the parcel: “Miss Babraham, 39b Park
Lane, W.”
June was hardly in a state just then to grasp the significance of the
words. Her mind was wholly given up to concern for the treasure which
had passed to alien hands. And yet the words had significance, even for
her, as the mind-process they induced soon began to reveal.
A locked door of memory, of which she had lost the key, seemed to glide
back. Thoughts of William, of his friend, the tall, beautiful and
distinguished wearer of the blue crepe de chine, and of Sir Arthur, her
father, came crowding into her brain. And with them came a perceptible
easing of spirit, as if they had been sped by the kindly hand of that
Providence, of whom she had never been so much in need.
The recognition of this acted upon her like a charm. Girt by the
knowledge that she was not alone in the world after all, and that
friends might be at hand if only she could reach out to them, her mind
began once more to function.
Even while Maw and Elbert were occupying themselves with the parcel’s
address and its specific importance, June was fain to inquire of an
awaking self how such magic words came to be there at such a moment.
Casting back to recent events, over which oblivion had swept, she was
able to recall certain strands in the subtle woof of Fate. Days ago,
years they seemed now, Miss Babraham had sent to William a picture
frame to be restored. The stout brown paper in which it had been
wrapped appealed to June’s thrifty soul, and she had stowed it away in
her box for use on a future occasion. Her mind’s new, almost dangerous
clarity, enabled her to remember that upon the paper’s inner side was
an old Sotheran, Bookseller, Piccadilly label which bore the name and
address of Miss Babraham.
The piecing together of this slender chain gave June the thing she
needed most. At this signal manifestation of what Providence could do,
hope revived in her. If only she could get to Park Lane--wherever Park
Lane might be!--to Miss Babraham.
As if in answer to the half-formed wish, Maw’s dominant voice took up
the parable. “Elbert, you’d better see this lidy as fur as Park Lane.”